Disclaimer: Supernatural and all characters associated with it do not belong to be. I'm just playing with them. Eric Kripke is the brilliant mind behind them.

Word Count: 550

Summary: Dean in the aftermath....

Notes: I know this has been done to death, but I had to do one too. Can't really say more... too busy being traumatized. *whimpers*

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Empty Spaces

Twenty-four hours after Dean walked into Lisa's home, he walked out again.

When he came in and he saw Ben at the dinner table with that confused expression on his face and the questioning looks he kept giving his mom, Dean knew he couldn't stay. Sure he liked the kid, he was awesome for a snot-factory but he was a kid. Dean wasn't about to screw with Ben the same way he screwed with Sam or their dad screwed with him.

God, Sam, him tumbling into the pit and dragging Adam-Michael with him left Dean cold inside. He never even got a chance to say goodbye... again. Sam left him again with no goodbye, no talk to you later and certainly no damn forwarding address.

Dean smashed his fist into the table in front of him, splintering a long crack down the 1970s retro-pressboard. He stared at his bloodied knuckles from one too many punches to the table and found he didn't care. He was alone. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was really alone. Dean felt sick.

The loneliness ate at him so bad that he almost drove his ass straight back to Lisa but then he would remember Ben's smiles and wanted those smiles to stay there. He knew the minute he set up camp at her house the smiles would slowly begin to fade as the confusion and jealousy worked its way in. Ben wouldn't take kindly to his position of man-of-the-house being trumped. Dean knew this as surely as he knew the day he was born.

He remembered that Lisa didn't try to stop him when he left. She must have seen the same dull and broken thing in his eyes that he could feel pouring out of him. Or maybe she was just freaked out by the disturbingly co-dependent relationship he had with his brother. He snorted, then the slight smile that was teasing his lips faltered... Had, had... Had no longer. He smashed the table again.

He then felt that pressure and moisture swimming back up to rest heavy on his eyes and choked out, "Sammy." Before falling victim to the sobs that had been drifting in and out for the last forty-eight hours solid.

He felt an annoying itching absence around his neck and reached up to bare skin. He thought back to dumping his amulet in the trash in that damn motel and cried all the harder. The last thing he had of Sammy was in a landfill somewhere; the leather rotting and the metal slowly rusting away. Slowly leaving the world forever. Not in one big bang like Sammy, but gone all the same.

Dean downed the last of his Jack straight from the bottle and dragged himself to one of the beds in the room. He had asked for a double automatically and couldn't bring himself to take it back.

He stared at the empty space where Sam should be, he listened to the silence in the room which Sam's breathing should be filling and he thought on the tear in his soul that his brother had been ripped out of.

Dean sobbed into the pillow, fisted his hand in the scratchy sheets and curled in on himself.

Would it ever stop hurting?

End

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